Colin turned his face away from the wide windows where the six o'clock sun was shining. He saw Jillian, walking very upright, heading toward the exit door of the cafeteria. The sunlight made the dust and lint on her backside sparkle. He looked away quickly so as not to be caught ogling. After a moment, he looked in her direction again. She was opening the door with her back and seemed to be looking his way. He snapped his head away again and smiled.
The next day, Colin was in a group therapy session which Jillian was leading. He was excited to see her again, and he wondered if their eyes had actually met, and if they had, if she'd taken note of it. The group started with introductions. A younger boy in the corner kicked it off. "Hi, I'm Bruce, and I'm an alcoholic," he said.
"Hi, Bruce," the room responded. The girl to his right followed. "Hi, I'm Meagan, and I'm an addict and an alcoholic," she said flatly.
"Hi, Meagan." And so it continued.
Colin knew that when it was his turn to speak, Jillian would be looking at him. He hoped that when that happened he would be able to tell whether or not it was the first time. However, when they faced each other, Colin's heart hit hard and he couldn't tell a thing because he turned his eyes away from hers more quickly than he had the first time. "Hi, I'm Colin, and I'm an alcoholic," he said, looking at the floor between his feet. "Hi, Colin," said the chorus.
Jillian's position leading the group gave Colin license to study her as long as he wished, just as long as she was talking. Her hair was dark and it was so close to black against her ghostly fair skin that it made Colin wonder whether it was natural. It was thick and wavy and hung just above her shoulders. Her eyes were a bit far from each other, but not so far that one might use the fact to describe her. Her nose was slight and pretty, and her mouth was full and wide. She had teeth that looked as though they'd always been just straight enough not to be braced according to the judgement of a liberal minded parent. To Colin, in the gestalt, her face was very beautiful and painfully sexy. It might have been her looks alone that lead him there, or her pretty voice and graceful way, or the possibility that she'd put an eye on him, but at some point during that session, Colin found that he'd developed a gripping crush on the young woman.
The next time they met, Jillian had come across him while doing room checks. There was a knock on the door and Colin said come in. He rested the book he was reading on his belly and turned his head to see who was there. She became striped in the shadows of the half open blinds as she entered. He said hello, but his voice was softer and less masculine than he'd wished. "I'm just doing room checks," she explained, then walked up to his foot-end bedpost and put up her shoe. "Sorry," she said. "My laces are loose."
Her hair fell over the side of her face and shaded her eyes from Colin's view. He took advantage and admired what he could see of her body. Her legs looked athletic, and the wave-like curves than ran from the back of her thigh, over her bottom, and down through the small of her back would doubtless satisfy the standards of more than a few idealists. Though he was inspired to, Colin knew it would be too much to hit on her outright, but he let his gaze stay in her direction, and sat up in bed, assertively, just before she put her foot down. On her way to the door she put her hand lightly on his knee, looked him in the eyes, and said, "It's good that you're here," then walked out.
Later, when the sun was below the horizon, with the soft lamplight and the colors of dusk in the window, Colin noticed that he felt good for the first time since he'd arrived. The memories of her look and the touch of her hand warmed him.
Jillian's face and her body and the simple sweetness which Colin felt she carried not only deterred him from the temptations to return to his decadence but also provided for him a kind of intoxication which trumped the promise of all the most alluring poisons. While she couldn't be bought off a shelf, Colin hoped he still possessed some currency in character and looks worth enough for her to consider him as a partner, if only in the short term.
The next day, Colin was watching and listening to Jillian lecture about relapse prevention. She kept talking about "triggers." "What are some examples of triggers?" she asked.
"Certain places," answered a girl.
"What kind of places?" Jillian asked.
"Like where I used to meet my dealer, at the mall."
"That's good. What do you think you should do in that case?"
"I don't know..."
"Do you think that mall is a good place for you to continue to go?"
"No. But it's like the only place to work in my town though. My girlfriend was gonna get me a job at the Shake Shack."
"Well, you need to focus on your recovery right now. You have to ask yourselves if a job is worth your life right now. There are other jobs. Recovery has to be your number one priority. It's a deadly serious disease. So what are some other triggers?"
Jillian strolled across the room as the patients threw out suggestions. She wasn't looking where she was going as she fielded them. Only looking up to the ceiling or down at the floor, she appeared dazed by the inanity of what was being said all around her. There was a table against the wall she was headed toward. It was a computer lab table, and desktops were lined along it, along with a paper plate which carried a slice of ice cream cake that one of the junkies had lost his appetite for. Jillian pivoted 180 degrees and continued in the same direction, walking backwards. In two steps her thighs were pressing up against the edge of the table. It seemed like everyone else was too busy whispering or shivering to notice what was about to happen. Colin, though, was watching intently, and perhaps Jillian noticed because she then said, "Colin, can you name a trigger that you tend to struggle with?" With that, she put her weight on her hands, lifted her feet off the ground, and sat down directly on top of the slice of Oreo ice cream cake. Her eyes hadn't broken from Colin's, even when they widened at the feel of the cold cream and chocolate pressing and molding into her crotch. The whipped cream topping was hanging off from her pants on her backside and between her legs when she stood.
Colin's mouth hung open. He had an erection so strong that it hurt. When Jillian broke her eyes away from his, she looked into her lap and wiped at some of the mess, but it only smeared it, and she reached around to her backside and wiped some from there and put a little back onto the plate. Her cluelessness in how to handle the situation looked something like a tease act. Colin got up and said he would get her some paper towels. The whole room, he realized, was laughing and joking while he walked out and he wondered if they, or Jillian, had noticed his hard on.
His excitement raged and became torturous in its intensity. He could feel pre-cum sticking to the inside of his underwear. Once inside the restroom, he went straight for a stall, locked the door, opened his pants and started jerking off and exhaling like he was finally letting go of a long held piss. The sequence of her crotch plopping onto the ice cream and then seeing the reaction on her face ran through his head on repeat three or four times, and then he was spurting all into the toilet water. He wiped his dick and hand off with toilet paper then used the same bunch for the droplets on the rim of the bowl.